sometimes-ihavethoughts

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

Limbo

You ever feel like your constantly waiting for the next thing? In high school it was to get out of the house. Freshman year it was to have my own place. Sophomore year it was to be done with probation. Junior year was just waiting for senior year and now senior year all I can think about is moving away. It's like I'm constantly in a state of wanting to be wherever I'm not. Always working for tomorrow and never enjoying today. Regretting decisions I made before that brought me to where I am. I try to make the most of the days I have left in this place but it's like all I can do is look forward to leaving. And it feels like no matter what I do I'm always going to wish I had done something different. Made a different decision so I could be in a different place than where I am now. So I try to make the decisions that will put me in that place I want to be next, but I forget that I bring myself with me. I forget that it's me that's not happy, it's not my surroundings. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'll just never be satisfied. Maybe I'll live my whole life wanting the next thing. God I hope not. They say that if a plant doesn't grow you have to change the environment in which it lives, but what if I'm my own environment? What if no matter how much sunshine and water I get I won't grow?

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

It would be nice to have my mom to talk to on nights like tonight

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

“The only way to find happiness is to risk being completely open”

A friend of mine was scrolling through my photo tumblr and pointed out this quote to me. One of my favorites for sure. Sometimes your mind can agree with something extremely profound and never really genuinely think deeply about it. These last few months I’ve learned so much about myself. I’ve learned how strong I am and how great my friends are. I’ve learned to appreciate those who are there for me. I’ve made new memories and new experiences where I thought old memories would haunt me forever. I’ve built myself up for things that in the past I would have torn myself down for. I’ve watched my own progress as I choose life whenever I’m in a bad place instead of the alternative. I’ve jumped into new friendships and found people to surround myself with that value me and support me and love me. Those people are my rocks. I can’t say how much I appreciate them. They have helped me see that no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay. As cliché as it sounds, everything really does happen for a reason, and I will learn and grow from whatever life throws at me. 

I know too many people who refuse to fall in love or have feelings for another person because they’ve been shit on by someone in the past. And I get it, that stuff hurts. I’ve written other posts about that feeling, because I know it’s one that shakes you to your core. It makes you believe that you may not move past it. It feels like you’ll never get over the amount of hurt you’re experiencing from what happened with that person or what they did to you. But the truth is, you will. You cannot control someone else actions, you can only control your own. And while being sad and grieving about a loss is perfectly normal, at a certain point you’ve just gotta choose to pick yourself back up. You’ve gotta choose to make a better life for yourself than the one you envisioned with that person. All those awesome experiences that came out of that relationship made you really truly happy at one point, so why would you not be willing to risk that again? New friendships and relationships are such a beautiful thing. Bonding over common interests, getting excited from a notification, joking about anything and everything, going on dates, trying new things, having first kisses and first times, and just the uncertainty of it all is such an awesome rush that really doesn’t compare to much else. If you allow yourself to feel those things and love people and be happy, good things will happen and you will find yourself enjoying life more. Bad things can come out of those risks too, but those are lessons. Getting hurt is truly part of life. If you refuse to care about others forever, you’ll always be searching for something else to make you happy. 

If theres 5 lessons I’ve learned for helping myself truly be happy they are this: 1. Free your heart from hatred. 2. Free your mind from worry. 3. Live freely. 4. Give more. and 5. Expect less. Every choice you make in life is either a blessing or a lesson, and you’ll move on from every lesson you experience. Everything happens for a reason, so allow yourself those happy memories and allow yourself to feel things for others, and do it not for anyone else but for yourself. Allow yourself to be honest and open with others and face your feelings even when you aren’t sure what will come of it. Even when you think it won’t go your way. Words are powerful and you should always say how you feel, because there’s a bunch of things you’ll regret not saying, but not many that you’ll regret saying. If you get kicked down, you’ll get back up, and you’ll be You 2.0. It’s like building muscle. You gotta tear them to build them stronger. You’ve got to experience how things shouldn’t be in order to realize what you truly want and see how they should be. Don’t expect everyone to always want to stick through life with you. Not everyone has the character for that. Sometimes people are merely shooting stars in your life that are meant to come through and shine bright and be on their way. Appreciate those people and do not harbor hatred for them when they are gone. If they were never there, you would have never learned what you were meant to. You are incredible, and if someone cannot see that, take it with a grain of salt and bring more people into your life that will. Learn and grow from each experience you have, and always be willing to make new ones. Fear can make you your own worst enemy. Don’t be afraid of being hurt. You have people who will help you through hard times. Take risks. Get out of your comfort zone and truly live, because if you don’t you’ll always wish you had. 

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

Moving on and getting over

You think it’s the end of the world when it happens. It crushes you like a thousand bricks on your chest and for days, weeks, even months sometimes, your mind can’t move an inch without bumping into some thought of them. And then one day you wake up. And on this day instead of being sad, you’re freakin mad. It’s like, you look back over everything and can’t begin to fathom how someone could have said all those things to you and then just turn around and fuck you over so easily. Like good god. You made me believe we were a team. You made me believe that what we had was unbreakable and anything we went through or any decision we made, we made together. And then one day you decide you just “don’t think you feel how you’re supposed to feel,” and the decision to end it all is solely yours. Like you have some sort of power to call the shots. Like this isn’t a two-way street. Like my opinion doesn’t matter and all my begging and pleading for you to stay with me is irrelevant. Here’s a life tip: you aren’t going to be head-over-heels in love with anyone every single day of your life. Relationships take work, and you made me believe that no matter what we would work. We would work until it stopped working. But instead you just decide you’re fed up. You’re done. You don’t think I’m worth the work. Well I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not need your work. My life is only up from here. You bailed on me when I needed you the most. When I had family shit and bad depression and was fighting demons you decided it was your time to walk away. And thinking about that makes my entire perspective of you change. I will never be able to look at you the same. I used to think of you as someone who would never, ever, hurt me, and yet here we are. I can’t even think of you without getting angry. I never would have handled this the way you did. I never would have made you feel unable to be loved. I never would have said the words, “it’s nothing you did, it’s just you as a person.” That’s so fucked up, dude. You don’t even realize. I’m glad this happened because if it wasn’t now, it would be at another time when I needed you. You were ready to bail. You had your finger on the trigger for months and never bothered to have a god damned conversation with me about it. We clearly were on completely different pages. I thought what we had was something very different than that. You couldn’t even fucking TELL me when you had confusing thoughts, and I shared myself inside out for you. Fuck you, honestly. I’m never going to be able to believe a word you say again. It’s about time I moved on.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

What a broken heart feels like

It feels like an empty stomach. Like an empty bed. Like the rooms around you keep getting smaller. It feels like searching for answers. And like never finding them. It feels like 2am curled in a ball on the bathroom floor. And like drunk at 2pm alone. It feels like being desperate. And like hating yourself for it. It feels more than empty. It feels hollow. It feels like nausea and pain and depression. It feels like scarred wrists reminding you of your past and fighting yourself to not go back. It feels like asking why. It feels like pretending to be happy. It feels like begging to bring it back. It feels like replaying every moment and trying to find where it went wrong. Like questioning everything and getting no answers. It feels like there’s nothing else you can say. It feels like losing something that was your entire world. And like it was just so easy. It feels like losing yourself. Like there’s nothing to keep you going anymore. It feels like you didn’t know you could hurt this much. Like you couldn’t stop crying even if you wanted to. It feels like wanting to wake up next to them just one more time. Like wanting just one more kiss. One more hug. One more moment of feeling so in love. It feels like a building is crushing your chest. Like you can’t breathe. Like your drowning. It feels like dealing with it on your own. It feels like no matter what it feels like, it doesn’t matter. Because the only one that can feel it and try to deal with it is you.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

So, why are you a vegan?

A question I get asked more times than I can count. And my most honest answer is: because I can’t think of a single reason to eat meat, when I know the disastrous effects it has on every realm of our life.

Let’s start at square 1. My body. My body is the shell that will house me until the day my energy passes on to another realm. If I don’t keep this physical part of me in its best condition, how do I expect to live the best life I want? And so many people tell me, “you don’t get your protein, you don’t get x and y,” but the fact of the matter is, I get all of those things, and in their purest, most original form. Clearly many people do not understand scientific fact. The topic of my diet is no different, so allow me to explain. In order for you to get any nutrients from slaughtering a cow and eating its meat, that cow must first eat plants, in order to absorb its proteins. However, a cow can eat 1,000 grams of protein, and you would only receive 10% of that, and in a much more harmful and toxin-fulled form. Outside of people not understanding how nutrient consumption works, it’s been scientifically proven that a plant based diet will keep your body in its most healthy form. Don’t believe me? Watch Forks over Knives if you have a few hours, and if you only have a few minutes, head over to NutritionFacts.org and watch some of Dr. Gregor’s videos. 

Now, I used to be the first person to ignore things that were best for me, especially when it came to my health. So I understand if “health” just isn’t quite enough to make you want to make such a significant life change. So let’s move on to something much bigger than myself. Ethical treatment of animals. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust people that look at any sweet little furry face and don’t think, “this is the cutest and most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and how did we get so lucky as to have these lovable companions that show us unconditional love.” Now I get it, some people don’t have that intense love for animals, but then moment someone wants to hurt them, we call them sociopaths and serial killers. So, why do we let slaughter happen on a massive scale? Well for no other reason other than “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” 

There’s this thing called cognitive dissonance. If you have heard of it, you may know where I’m going with this. If not, let me explain. In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. Meaning, they perform an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values, or they are confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values. So for example, you claim to love your dog and all animals more than anything, but you have no problem scarfing down a hamburger that was raised for slaughter. You justify this by saying “well not all places are like that,” or “some of them are raised humanely,” as if that makes up for all the others that were not (and, by the way, farm-raised animal agriculture, while slightly more humane, is worse for the environment than factory raised, because you are using the same amount of resources and emitting the same amount of greenhouse gases, for less meat). This cognitive dissonance is so pervasive in our society that we actually convince ourselves that some animals lives matter more than others. This is dangerous and costs billions of lives every year. Why would you not want to do your part to help reduce the suffering in the world?

Okay. So, health isn’t a good enough reason for you, and you just don’t care about animals because they just “taste too good.” So how about your air? Do you care about breathing? What about water? Do you care about having clean water to drink? Animal agriculture emits more harmful greenhouse gases into the air than all methods of transportation: cars, trains, planes, etc, COMBINED. Let me tell you what has already happened and will continue if we do not get our animal consumption in check. 

Too many greenhouse gases are emitted into the air every second. These gases increase the intensity of the “greenhouse effect” that our Earth has in order to keep us alive. In response to this increased effect, the earth starts to warm on a global scale. Ice caps start to melt and have displaced thousands of refugees who used to call islands their home. Gases in the air get put into our oceans, causing it to acidify. Acidification has destroyed over 90% of our coral reefs in the last few decades. Without the abundant life in those reefs, ecosystems start to fall apart, causing mass extinction. Not to mention the earth we are destroying in order to make room for this animal agriculture. More than half of earth’s rainforests have been destroyed in the last decade to make room for MORE MORE MORE meat (because we have MORE MORE MORE people), causing thousands of species to go extinct. This throws food chains out of wack and makes conditions even more unstable. 

Raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30% of the Earth’s land mass. Out of all of that land, we could grow enough food to feed everyone in America on a plant-based diet using just 1 PERCENT of it. It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat. Fish on fish farms must be fed 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce one pound of farmed fish flesh.

The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth. Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food. It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat and only 25 gallons to produce one pound of wheat. Animals raised for food produce approximately 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population and animal farms pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Run-offs of animal waste, pesticides, chemicals, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics are contributing to dead zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reef and health problems. 

“By replacing your ‘regular car’ with a Toyota Prius, the average person can prevent the emission of about 1 tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere. By replacing an omnivorous diet with a vegan diet, the average person can prevent the emission of about 1.5 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s 50% more CO2 saved!”

So why do we continue to do this? Why, with all these facts glaring in our face do we continue to make this situation worse? And do you know why? It’s money. The powerful make money off of feeding you lies in order to make you think that this world is one way, when it is really something completely different. 

People have this tendency to believe whatever they have been told to be true. As a society, we have been taught that authority is the truth, rather than truth being the authority. I have watched way too many documentaries to be drinking the Kool-Aid our government gives us. Anything they are trying to tell us and convince us is good for us, I don’t believe, because everything they convince the people of has a motive, usually a monetary one. I have a general distrust in much of our government because they have billions of dollars of self-interested money from agri-business, big pharma, etc. Would you not rather give your body the nutrients to treat issues at the source and become a healthier, stronger, version of yourself, instead of paying for drugs just to mask the pain and make the rich richer? 

The more I educate myself and learn about this world, and the more I discover how things happened throughout history, and the interests behind world events and propaganda intended to sway public thought in order for the powerful to get what they want, the more I see that humans have really been lied to by those powerful people for all of history. We have been taught that just because this is how we’ve always done it, that it is right. That we must do what we are told, or there will be consequences. And we don’t even question it. But if we don’t learn from our mistakes, and quickly, we won’t have a future to argue about.

If you believe in God, I cannot imagine that you truly believe that this was his intention for us when he created a beautiful abundant, living, breathing, earth. For me, veganism all comes full circle when you begin to see these lies. “The more you begin to investigate what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we’re doing, the more you begin to see we’ve been lied to. We’ve been lied to by every institution.”

To quote from a good friend of mine and an amazing human being, Morgan King, “The influence of money on politics impacts the way we live our lives. The dairy conspiracy is just one piece of this corrupt puzzle. An ideal citizen, in the minds of elite capitalists, is one who is misinformed, sick, and distracted. They misinform us and give us dietary guidelines that are formed with special interests in mind. Because the guidelines aren’t based in empirical evidence, we are sick from many preventable diseases and have to pay big pharma thousands of dollars to keep us “healthy”. And of course, we are too distracted to notice any of this because we are being constantly bombarded with advertisements and expectations of how we should act, and we are not taught mindfulness and meditation in school, which would help us see what is really going on. But to do the right thing ethically, to teach people ways of sustainable living and empower them to take care of their own health, this doesn’t make money for the powers in place. If you’re eating animal products, you are buying into the lies that the US government has bestowed upon its citizens in order to make money for special interests. The US government does not have your interests and well-being in mind when they tell you animal products are part of a healthy diet.” I think she just hit the nail on the head.

“The bottom line is that the government is getting what they have ordered. They do not want your children to be educated… they do not want you to think too much. That is why our country and our world has become so proliferated entertainments, mass media television shows, amusement parks, drugs, alcohol and every kind of entertainment - to keep the human entertained. So that you don’t get in the way of important people by doing too much thinking. You had better wake up and understand that there are people who are guiding your life and you don’t even know it.”

A new consciousness is developing among youth who see the earth as a single organism. Living, breathing, thriving. We all come from the cosmos and are a part of this beautifully interconnected and patterned earth, many just do not see it anymore because we do not connect with our roots. We do not connect with the earth and we surround ourselves with things that don’t matter. Taking time to just be in nature and experience all it has to offer will bring you clarity. Our mother earth is calling to us, we just have to be willing to answer her.

“The whole system that we live in, drills into us that we are powerless, that we are weak, that society is evil & crime ridden and so forth… it is all a big fat lie! We are powerful beautiful - extraordinary. There is no reason why we cannot understand who we truly are - where we are going. There is no reason why the average individual cannot be fully empowered - we are incredibly powerful beings.”

So I encourage you to learn for yourself. Empower yourself. Find the truth for yourself. Don’t just listen to what you see on TV and believe things because that’s how they’ve always been. Seek truth. Know truth. "You have to know the truth and seek the truth and the truth will set you free.”

Sources:

The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat by Mark Gold and Jonathon Porritt

“The Food Revolution” by John Robbins

Forks over Knives documentary (on Netflix)

Cowspiracy documentary (on Netflix)

Earthlings documentary (on Netflix)

Before the Flood documentary (on YouTube, NatGeo, and others)

NutritionFacts.org

Zeitgeist: The Movie

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

The reality is

The next world war will be the end of human existence as we know it. It will not be a war of policy or disagreement, but one of fighting for resources. These are facts. We have destroyed our planet beyond repair and continue to destroy it more every day. The planet is getting warmer. The oceans are acidifying. The coral reefs are dying. The sea levels are rising and displacing thousands, threatening national security. Animals are murdered by the hundreds of thousands per second. The forests are being torn down. 90% of known species have gone extinct since the first humans walked the earth. Ecosystems are being depleted in the name of short-term coal profits. We are using all our fresh water faster than we can replenish it. We are poisoning our water systems with oil spills and co2. We are poisoning our air with chemicals. We breed animals to kill them inhumanely. We use products and throw away the packaging for no reason other than convenience. By 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. We are not nurturing the planet that nurtures us. We are using every last bit of what we have and somehow wasting even more, and we leave nothing for future generations. Soon, and I'm talking in our lifetime soon, not 100 years from now, there will be war for basic needs such as food and water. We will kill for something as simple as h2o. This is the legacy humans leave. This is what we do. We destroy. We use. We do whatever we want for money. We leave nothing for our future, and so we will not have one.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

Can we even turn back now?

With the political landscape how it has been today, it has been increasingly difficult for me to gather my thoughts about what has happened. I spent the better half of last night and this morning crying over this, and I really just feel lost, defeated, and hopeless.

I know I am not alone in this. We are human. We are your daughters, sisters, mothers. We are Muslims, black people, hispanics, latinxs, LGBTQ, people from all walks of life. We have been assaulted, beaten, and battered. We have been degraded, denounced, and defeated. We have been told we do not matter. Through this election cycle we have been begging, pleading for you to hear our cry that we deserve rights, we deserve love, we deserve freedom, and you have told us we are unimportant. 

This is not a matter of anti-republican rhetoric. This is a matter of normalized hate speech and the people of this country, my friends, who may no longer have a future here because of what we have done. 

If you voted for Trump, I take it personally. You have told me that my safety, livelihood, and future in this country are trivial to you. You have told me that my friends, my support system, and so many of those I love and look up to do not deserve a place in this country. You have told me you have bought into a Nazi-resembling America, and that you have learned nothing from your history. 

But America can make it through another civil rights movement, and I believe we will. I believe we have the will and the courage to fight for what is right and good in this world, and that we can make a difference, though the path will be much stronger against us now. We may have lost the fight, but the war has only begun. Now we must give everything we have to fight this, and I believe racial relations and prejudices can be mended in this country. It will take time and much protest, but we have done it before, and we will do it again, and I believe we are stronger and more powerful in numbers than any of our biggest adversaries.

However. 

We are at a tipping point on our planet, and that requires action. Not in 4 years. Now. Beijing has been choked by industrial pollution. Ancient Boreal forests in Canada have been completely cut down. Rainforests in Indonesia have been burned to ash. Farmers’ crops in India have been literally been washed away by historic flooding. In America drought cripples our economy, and sea level rise has flooded the streets of Miami. In Greenland and in the Arctic, ancient glaciers are rapidly disappearing well ahead of scientific predictions. This a direct result of human activity and the effects of climate change will only become astronomically worse in the future. Left unchecked, it will deplete our fresh water and resources, which will lead to famine, and ultimately a war far larger than humankind has ever seen. 

Climate change is happening faster than even the most pessimistic of scientists warned us decades ago, and we have elected a leader that knows this, but denies it to the public. He filed for a permit to build a wall around one of his golf courses, and when asked for a reason he wrote, and I quote, “Climate change and its effects.”

Almost half of both the house and senate are paid millions each year by fossil fuel interests and climate change deniers. With this election, we have made it near impossible to fix the damage we have done to our Earth. We have said goodbye to the future of our planet, by choosing to ignore the problem and refusing to cut our consumption. We have screamed a resounding "fuck you" to the only Mother who ever loved and nurtured us, in the name of short-term, cheap coal, monetary gain. American people are resilient. They can fight the toughest ignorances and prejudices that face them. But our planet cannot. Earth cannot fight back. It cannot tell us to stop. That is up to us, and we have chosen to ignore its plight.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

Rest in Peace, Bethany Thompson

I read an article today about a little girl, Bethany Thompson, an 11-year-old cancer survivor, who committed suicide after relentless bullying. Reading this article made me so so angry and sad. Terrible situations like this happen because we teach our children hate. We teach them that if they are not pretty enough, smart enough, white enough, that they aren't good enough. We fuel racism and prejudices against people who aren't exactly like us. We teach our children through our words and our actions that they are entitled, that they are better than other people, and that they have a right to make others feel bad for not being a copy. Rest in peace, Bethany. I'm so sorry our world did this to you. I'm sorry parents teach their children hate. I wish these situations could be avoided, but the reality is, they won't ever stop. They'll keep teaching their children that they are better than others. It's not okay or right or acceptable, but they will. Sending much love to Bethany's family. I'm so sorry others' ignorance had to become your pain.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

There comes a time in every sexual assault victims life when she must ask her father why he supports a sexual predator for president.

I asked my father to watch a documentary on climate change and he responded with an email about how I should vote for Trump, how “God is being stripped from society and our rights are being taken away” and how you can’t pray in school. This is what I had to say:

I find it offensive that you don’t believe I am "smart enough" or “old enough" to form my own opinions, when I am actively involved in politics and make an effort to watch all debates and keep myself informed to the highest degree. So here’s what I have to say to that.

There will be lies and corruption no matter who is in office. I cannot consciously vote for someone who will dismantle the EPA and doesn’t give a single fuck about the state of our planet. Trump racist, misogynist, and doesn’t care about the rights of women or anyone but white, corporate America. It offends me as a woman that you would vote for him. He has several sexual assault claims filed against him and refuses to take responsibility for anything he has said or done. I don’t care if you hate Hillary. I don’t care if you think Bernie is a communist. If you plan on voting for Donald Trump as the President of the United States, I feel like a deserve an explanation as to why you believe a man like that, a man who takes the topic of assaulting women lightly, deserves to be in ANY position of power. Explain to your daughters, friends, any female in your life that you value, why their safety and status as a woman is trivial. Look at a woman you love in the eye and tell her why you support a man who normalizes rape culture to run our country when 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

Trump acts like a child and says that anything that doesn’t go his way is “rigged” and his foreign policy plans would fundamentally dismantle the foundation of our democracy, not to mention put us billions of more dollars in debt. Everything he speaks comes from a place of white privilege and a misunderstanding of the fundamental basics of social equality. Trump doesn’t understand these issues because he has never been personally exposed to these prejudices.

There is a reason why the more educated you are, the more liberal you are. It’s because “working hard” isn’t a valid plan to succeed anymore. Your generation was the generation where 2 teachers could afford to buy a 4 bedroom house in San Diego, CA and then afford the mortgage and raise 2 kids in private school. Your generation was the generation where 1 parent could work in Financial Aid at the local college and the other could raise 2 kids in a 3 bedroom house. Your generation was the generation where you could wash dishes to put yourself through college and law school. MY generation can’t buy a home when the average cost is $440k and a combined income of 2 teachers is only $70k, and they have to pay 35% income to rent, let alone trying to afford children. My generation has both parents working, one or both working 2 jobs just to buy food, not even able to afford a family vacation once a year. My generation is in student debt on AVERAGE $29,400, and we have scholarships, but they only cover 40% of the cost and when law school costs $120k for 2 years, you do the math. My generation didn’t fuck things up. We’re only 20-25. We didn’t get into the war in 2001 (we were like 11), we didn’t defund mental health institutions in 1975, we didn’t decide that grants and scholarships should be funded less that and tuition should cost more, we didn’t raise the housing market 7000%. So don’t tell me people “just” need to “get a better job” or that they “only” have to “work hard” or go to a “good school.” Because it doesn’t work like that anymore.

The United States, Europe, and capitalism itself sit on the pedestal of the enslavement of African people, on the genocide against the indigenous people, and on the colonial terror and domination and genocide against the majority of the people on planet earth. All of our history books and everything we are taught was written by white, anglo-saxon people to downgrade the hand they played in the mass extinction of people and cultures. Our economy runs on immigrant jobs, and without those people to do those jobs, our economy will collapse. Our country may not be the same when I am your age if Hillary wins, but our country will not exist when I am your age if Trump wins. It will be destroyed by drought, famine, flooding, and pollution. I don’t think Hillary is perfect either. But she at least shows a plan to protect our planet, and has spent her entire life in politics and working on foreign policy. Trump would rather watch it burn. For Christ’s sake, while she was in the Situation Room discussing the plan to capture Bin Landen, Trump was hosting the celebrity apprentice. Our country has had bad presidents. We can survive a bad president. We cannot survive Trump. Hillary at the very least understands what needs to be done, and knows how government works. Flawed though she may be, there is a perfectly clear choice in this election. This man knows nothing. He has answered no questions with anything relevant. This is bullshit, circular nonsense and childishness. We cannot have this man-baby running the country. This is ridiculous.

Also you actually CAN pray in schools. Thinking that you can’t is a lie that conservatives want you to believe. You can worship whoever the fuck you want in school. The teachers just can’t tell you to. Also not to mention that just about every religion preaches love and forgiveness, the fact that you think Christianity is the only viable religion is beyond me. Christianity didn’t even exist until a few hundred years ago..

Jesus said turn the other cheek. Donald Trump, however, childishly and vindictively responds to every criticism, no matter how small or professionally irrelevant. Fellow billionaire Richard Branson has said that Trump ruined a lunch meeting between the two by planning revenge on five people who refused to help him after his bankruptcy. A man after Jesus’s heart for sure.

When the Bush administration was discovered to have erased millions of emails illegally sent by 22 administration officials through private, RNC-owned accounts, in order to thwart an investigation into the politically motivated firing of eight US attorneys, just one talk show covered it that Sunday.

When Mitt Romney wiped servers, sold government hard drives to his closest aides and spent $100,000 in taxpayer money to destroy his administration’s emails, it was barely an issue.

When Hillary Clinton asked Colin Powell how he managed to use a Blackberry while serving as Secretary of State, he replied by detailing his method of intentionally bypassing federal record-keeping laws: “I didn’t have a Blackberry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels … There is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it is owned by the government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law.”

Yet the fact that Hillary Clinton emailed through a private server and didn’t use it to cover anything up is somehow the defining issue of her campaign. “My God,” people cry, “anyone else would be in jail!”

Again I say. Hillary is not perfect. But Trump would destroy America. He is in no possible way a better choice. And you cannot change my mind about that.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

Georgians–vote no to Amendment 1

I truly believe almost every issue in our society can be traced back to education, and in order to fix that, we cannot have state government making the decisions for these schools, enforcing common core, and basing success on standardized test scores.

The ballot initiative for the OSD is not what it is pretending to be. The amendment itself is deceptive in wording, and intentionally misleads and disguises the true intentions of the OSD legislation. The amendment was written by Gov. Nathan Deal and the two leaders of the state House and Senate, who introduce the measure this way: “Provides greater flexibility and state accountability to fix failing schools through increasing community involvement.” However, parental and community involvement is not increased by or required by the OSD legislation.

The proposed constitutional amendment would create a new layer of politics and red tape in Atlanta, under which Gov. Deal would appoint a highly paid bureaucrat with access to local tax dollars to “fix” unsatisfactory schools. This appointee would answer only to the governor as to what he or she does with the money. They would skim public money off the top and give it to private education management corporations, which are for-profit organizations who make political campaign contributions to legislative supporters of OSD and other privatization efforts, and whose teachers likely do not have the academic success of students at heart.

The OSD would be operated outside of the State Board of Education jurisdiction, and it would have the authority to take over 20 schools per year, with the capacity of having as many as 100 schools under its control at a time. The chosen schools could be under control of the OSD for up to 10 years. Teachers are not guaranteed to keep their jobs under the occupation of the OSD, and are likely to be substituted with non-certified personnel from Teach for America, a national teacher corporation of recent college graduates who commit just two years to teaching in under-resourced urban and rural public schools.

Schools in communities that are struggling to attain basic necessities for their students are still judged by the same standards as schools that need the least, so one could argue that OSD is based on a false premise. There is no such thing as a failing school—the state and society have failed these communities and their schools.

On top of taking power out of the hands of parents, teachers, and local communities who care about the education of their children, the OSD would disproportionally affect the education of children living in low-income areas. Local education in Georgia is funded primarily through property taxes, so it’s not much to wonder why schools in suburban Atlanta out-preform those south of I-20.

In order to make “failing” schools better, we need to fund them in a way that doesn’t favor predominately white, suburban Atlanta schools. The state government should not attempt to “fix” a problem by handing struggling schools over to corporate charter operators and base success rates almost entirely on standardized test results. It makes no sense for Gov. Deal to lobby for state government overreach in such a clearly local affair.